Fishing from the hard side

Sept. 30, 2010 at 4:30 a.m.

By Elaine Wheat

"Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall."

Proverbs 16:18

I choose to fish from the hardest side of the bridge that leads to a back bay. My side is harder from which to cast because it has a big very important looking electrical wire running above it and I have to cast short and side armed.

The other side has no hazard slung across it and I can throw as far and high as I can. Problem is that I have never caught a fish from that side, even though they look alike with their weeds growing up to their waters that are covering their shells and rocks. I have seen others do it, but I can't and don't ask me why. Go ask the fish.

I was admiring the rusted fishing gear that was dangling from the line in front of me because someone had forgotten to throw under it, when my 50-year-old son came over to announce that he wanted to fish by his beloved mother and that he hadn't caught any thing from the easy side and I already had two from the hard side. Yeh, "Beloved Mother." I really fell for that.

Every time he got ready to cast, this beloved mother would remind him, "Don't forget the wire." He let this go on a few times and I could tell I was pushing it when he said, "I had rather get hung up than to hear you say that again."

In a show of mid-life crisis, he cast his line with a mighty, manly hurl and threw it right over the cursed, believe me, wire, and with that look on his face, I didn't dare laugh or say something stupid like, "Momma knows best."

After he could unclench his teeth, he said, "I was trying to cast over the wire. Anybody, even you, can catch a couple casting under it." He plopped himself down in his lawn chair and just sat there watching his cork bob along on the out going tide. Then we both watched in awe as we saw the cork go under. Neither of us spoke.

Brad reeled the cork in until it was nearly under the wire, confidently bounced it up and down three times and gave it a mighty yank and when it flew over the line, fish and all, he looked over at me and calmly lied like a dog and said, "That is what I had planned all along."

It was then that the flying flat fish hit him flat in the chest and when he tried to dodge it, he kicked his lawn chair in but grabbed my pole and was trying to hook the chair when he kicked the bait in.

All he suggested was that it was now time to go home and grill our fish while we are still alive.

Dear Lord, thank you for dear times that make the people we love dear to us. That is why it is good for God and his dearly beloved to spend